The Sourcing and Interpretation of Cahokia-Style Figurines in the Trans-Mississippi South and Southeast

Abstract

Exchange of preciosities is often considered an integral factor in the emergence of Mississippian chiefdoms, and the rise of Cahokia has been linked to such long-distance trade. We know that Cahokia was the center of production for large flint clay figurines and effigy pipes (Emerson and Hughes 2000). Similar Cahokia-style figures have been found in the Trans-Mississippi South and the Southeast. We investigated the material used.to make these figures using a newly developed nondestructive PIMA SP™ spectroscopic technology to identify the stone and to determine their source location. These analyses proved that the figures were made of Missouri flint clay from quarries near St. Louis. We submit that Cahokia was the twelfth-century source for the production of these Cahokia-style figures. Outside of Cahokia the flint clay figures were primarily found in Caddoan mortuaries, reinforcing earlier evidence of a strong Cahokia-Caddoan connection. The available chronological and contextual information indicates the flint clay figures left Cahokia after it began to decline in the late thirteenth-century, through various mechanisms of extra-local exchange rather than as part of any systematic prestige-goods network. The association of these highly symbolic figures with Cahokia allows us to reevaluate the indigenous iconography and propose that many of the themes (e.g., fertility and warfare) that later appear in Eastern Woodlands native cosmology such as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex were first codified here in the twelfth-century.

Who Benefits from Complexity? A View from Futuna

“…In other chiefdom contexts like Buganda, top positions of hierarchy are seen as being established by demonstrating "direct, effective, and/or tangible contact with cosmological primacy" (Helms 1999). Other archaeologists argue for the predominant importance of the role of sacred knowledge in the creation of chiefdoms and early states (Emerson et al 2003, Gell 1993:240, Helms 1994:58-59, 1999, Joyce and Winter 1996, Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005:165-167, 248, 288, Chazan 2007:308, Pauketat and Emerson 1997, see also Cauvin 2000. In these cases, "The critical question is the degree to which the elites managed society by ... religious authority" (Chazan 2007:308, 353).…”

The Inalienable Rite: Smoking Ritual During the Mississippian Stage in the South Appalachian Mississippi Region

“…The few exceptions pertain either to areas of the Mississippian world outside of my study area or they are cursory in nature (e.g., Emerson et al 2003;Steponaitis and Dockery 2011). As I will demonstrate, smoking ritual was an indispensable feature of Mississippian religious practices and an appreciation of its role is necessary for a thoroughgoing portrayal of Mississippian existence.…”

“…A number of stone figurines from that region portray female personages together with symbolic elements that strongly suggest concerns with fertility. Archaeologists working in the Cahokia area have generally settled in consensus that a primary message conveyed by the figures (some of which were eventually modified for use as pipes, incidentally) is a form of the Earth Mother concept (Emerson et al 2003;Prentice 1986). In fact, Emerson (1997) has argued that these objects functioned in rites associated with a Cult of Fertility.…”

“…Support for this suggestion lies in the fact of their anthropomorphic style, meaning that they may represent ancestral figures to which connections were sought as a means of elite legitimation. (It is interesting and perhaps no coincidence that these unique Effigy pipes were preceded in the central Mississippi Valley by similar pipe forms, although of different styles (Emerson et al 2003;Pauketat 2010).) Perhaps, too, they persisted for an extended time, even as virtual "antiques", by virtue of an enduring stylistic appeal and also of their manufacture from durable stone.…”

“…Examples of Piasa pipes occur as close to the study area as Moundville in Alabama (Moore 1905;West 1934). Neither do examples of the celebrated bauxite figurine pipes linked with Cahokia and other far-western sites occur in the study area (Emerson et al 2003;Prentice 1986). Perhaps the closest pipe of the general kind is from a mound on the Shiloh battlefield site in Tennessee (Welch 2006).…”